Digitization of Important Libraries Book Catalog in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana

summaryThis project aims to digitize the book catalogs of about 10 important libraries in the state of Andhra Pradesh and will mostly focus on Telugu books within the catalogs. The attempt is to make the Telugu book visible and accessible for any seeker of knowledge in Telugu. The key assumption behind this project is book visible = accessible = citable = readable.

An important problem that Telugu Wikipedia faces is the lack of adequate citations to articles. This to an extent is symptomatic of a larger and complex problem. Though a number of books and journals have been published in Telugu language during the last 150 years, a majority of this knowledge is not accessible on the Internet. Whether one likes it or not, in this age and time, if a book or a journal is not easily accessible then one believes it does not exist. Virtual accessibility of at least the existence of the book or a knowledge resources is no more a luxury but a necessity for an emerging knowledge society like India. And accessibility to Indian language resources that are otherwise lying in the untouched shelves of libraries is even a bigger necessity for the vast numbers of “only Telugu” speaking/reading/writing population that is coming onto the virtual web. The problems for the growth of open knowledge in an Indian language like Telugu are very complex. This project is an attempt to solve a very tiny part of that problem. It is to make the existence of a vast number of Telugu Books visible on the web. There are already certain number of copyright lapsed Telugu books that are available on Archive.org and Digital Library of India. However, a vast number of books that got published during the last 70 years are mostly available in the form of (mostly) manual library catalogs. While some libraries do have digital catalogs they are mostly in English and are offline.

Take a simple test. Search for some of the notable Telugu books or search by keywords or authors and you hardly find relevant and useful information. Even the existing details of books available in public domain are enumerated in English and a seeker of knowledge has to try various permutation and combinations to discover that something exists on an open platform like DLI and Archive.org.

In this context, this project proposes to digitize and make openly available in a searchable form the Telugu book catalogs of at least 10 most important libraries. The logic of this project is that if the book is visible (for the seeker and searcher of knowledge on the Internet) it becomes accessible, once accessible it becomes readable and then citable. If the book is available on the web then it will be hyper-linked. These digital catalogs will be of use to young researchers, scholars, readers, journalists and Wikipedians within the Telugu knowledge universe, who are increasingly depending on the web to search for knowledge resources. While this project is clear that it cannot make available the books to the seeker of knowledge, at the least it shows her the nearby library location from where it could be accessed.

For a Telugu Wikipedian like me, who otherwise is busy with life and gets onto to Wikipedia late in the night to share some knowledge and wastes a lot of time searching for relevant books in Telugu, I believe this project will be that first step to save time. The digital catalogs, I believe, will help the Telugu Wikipedians in effectively (saving a lot of time) collecting information, sources and add citations to articles on Telugu Wikipedia. By covering 10 most important libraries across various cities, this project also aims to create a network among the Telugu Wikipedians to collaborate in search and cite operations on Telugu Wikipedia. For instance, I realize that there is a book (thanks to this digital catalog) in Hyderabad, which is 600 km away from where I am, I can take the help of my fellow Wikipedian User:Rajasekhar1961 in getting the relevant information from the book. I know I am not wasting too much of his time as I have already located the book for him. I believe that these digital catalogs could also help strengthen the networks among the Telugu Wikipedians in a subtle way. Needless to say that this project will help improve the quality of articles over the years to come in terms of citations and references and also could trigger creation of new articles.

As I propose to host the catalogs on Telugu Wikipedia, it may also attract new users to the Telugu Wikimedia projects and help them in finding readily available resources to write and cite from.

At least 3 edit-a-thons will be organized with Telugu Wikimedians in these libraries, where in citation and article writing sprints will be take up as activities.

In the process of digitization of these important libraries, efforts will also be put to reach out to the people visiting these libraries and give orientation on Telugu Wikimedia projects. Interested library staff across these 10 libraries will also be initiated to contribute to Telugu Wikimedia projects.

Do you think this project should be selected for an Individual Engagement Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. (Other constructive feedback is welcome on the talk page of this proposal).

SupportI support this project, there is good information about the science, arts, culture, music, development of telugu literature. I don't find any individual/ group and government contribution towards digitization - Kasyap --Kasyap (talk) 13:12, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

Support India is swell with ancient wisdom. However, most of such treasures are languishing within the pulp archives and palm leaves within libraries and private collections which are direly in want of resources for preserving their priceless material. Before it is too late, somebody should act and retrieve at least what is still left. My wholehearted support to this project. ViswaPrabhaവിശ്വപ്രഭtalk 12:06, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Support This project is much required for the conventional libraries that do not upgrade to current technologies and are adhered to old traditional book keeping. This project could also be replicated at various other libraries. This would benefit both Wikipedia and book seekers equally. --Rahmanuddin (talk) 17:34, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Support India is very rich in ancient wisdom. However, most of such treasures are languishing within the archives and palm leaves within libraries and private collections which are direly in want of resources for preserving their priceless material. Before it is too late, we should act and retrieve at least what is still left with us now. This project is much required for the conventional libraries that do not upgrade to current technologies and are adhered to old traditional book keeping. This project could also be replicated at various other libraries. This would benefit both Wikipedia, Wikisource and book seekers and language researchers. My whole hearted support to this. We must also start similar projects in other Indian languages also.--Rajasekhar1961 (talk) 05:37, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Support In case of physical libraries, Telugu people take initiation in early 20th century and I'm very glad again someone from Telugu people going to take initiative steps to extend those efforts by our visionaries into digital world. I wholeheartedly feel this will be a great project to help wikimedia and telugu culture as well. --Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 05:54, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Support I support this project, it helps to develop the content in various fields like science, arts, culture, music and the development of telugu literature.This would benefit both Wikipedia and book seekers equally.--K.Venkataramana (talk) 06:02, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Support --Good project.I too support this project.Please try to get very rare old books such as vastugunadeepika (ayurveda materia medica)chatupadyalu,sametalu,lyrics of old telugu cinema songs etc.,and make them available ni wiki source.--Nrahamthulla (talk) 06:27, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

I hope this project would help wikipedians to give citations. and improve the number of new articles and expand the old articles with full fledged information. Bhaskaranaidu (talk) 14:30, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Support Seems like a pretty good project. --Satdeep gill (talk) 13:24, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Support This will be useful to wikipedians. Good Project Arkrishna (talk) 22:12, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

This is a timely project which could be emulated across all our languages. The initiators should look at similar projects like Archive and Access (http://publicarchives.org/introducing-archives-and-access.html), and the work being done at Jadavpur University's School for Cultural Texts and Records, to see if there any learnings they could glean from there. Could the initiators list out which libraries they are planning to look at in AP and Telengana? Tniranjana (talk) 11:11, 17 October 2014 (UTC)